


or else we all are

by girlwondersteph



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Medium Chaos (Dishonored), but lbr he deserves it, everyone on the boat is a little bit terrible, i don't think this contradicts doto at all but if it does i don't care, sokolov has a bad time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-12 10:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12957489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlwondersteph/pseuds/girlwondersteph
Summary: The Dreadful Wale ports one last time in Dunwall; with Delilah neutralized, Emily Kaldwin has many things to resolve with her former allies.“Is that what you see? Me following her to Daud?”“I see all paths,” he said in lieu of an answer. “I see Serkonos afire, your Royal Protector still encased stone. I see the slit throats of Howlers and Overseers alike, and Emily the Butcher sitting in your throne, eating your food, wearing your face.”





	or else we all are

Emily could have taken a carriage to the docks, but of late she preferred to wind her way through Dunwall’s streets. It was important to remind herself of what she had fought so hard to regain; to not put herself above it, a distant Empress easy to defame and dethrone.

In some ways her previous lifestyle had served her well; most of her citizens knew her only from paintings and banners, through speeches during which she was required to look perfect and untouchable. It was easy to go unrecognized with her hair loose and in civilians’ clothes, a scarf pulled up over her mouth. Almost like before.

She smelled fish pie on the breeze, and just ahead a man was seated on the stone steps of the pub, half-drunk and singing a Morlish shanty. She’d heard Wyman humming it before, she thought, fresh back from another diplomatic mission.

_“We laughed and chattered,_

_Our hearts all a’scatter,_

_Running down spiral stairs._

_You walking to Wynnedown,_

_Heading for downtown,_

_Returning for all we needed—“_

A guardsman approached from the alleyway he’d been watching and took the drunk by the arm. He confiscated the whiskey bottle at his side and appeared to be giving him a stern talking-to. Certainly he was warning him against public disruption, but the songs of Morley were scarce heard in the capital for a reason. The insurrection had not been long ago, and the people of Gristol did not forget.

Emily passed the pair and picked up her pace; the Watch tended to cluster in large numbers wherever there was alcohol. She supposed she couldn’t blame them. She sidestepped a cart toting piles of the latest Dunwall Courier, and automatically scanned the headline for signs of herself or her father.

Nothing. It seemed the news of the day was the reopening of one of the businesses the Delilah’s witches had looted for material. Emily exhaled. She’d made certain to support journalists after the Crown Killer obstacle regardless of what they printed, but reading in depth articles about her failed endeavors as Empress never got any easier.

The sun was setting over the water; it was fine weather, for the often miserable Month of Rain. Emily’s day of birth had been just seven days before— Corvo had told her once that the Overseers called that an omen. Emily wondered what they would say if they knew the truth of her now.

She didn’t know why she was surprised to see the familiar outline of the Dreadful Wale, docked in the same place it had been when everything had gone to the hounds. Sokolov had promised her it would be, and he had no reason to lie to her. Somehow its presence didn’t put her at ease.

Up on the deck she saw Meagan, gazing tiredly across the city. Another familiar sight. She transversed to a lamppost, and then the top of the Wale, careful and easy— this was delicate work. Emily had a tendency to overshoot, and had no desire to either take a bath or be seen by Meagan.

If Meagan sensed anything was amiss, she didn’t turn. Emily slid down from the roof and slipped through the door leading down to where she would find Sokolov.

The main room was littered with Sokolov’s art supplies and odds and ends. Pinned to the wall were various scraps of paper detailing black market jobs, everything from petty theft to actual heists, and a marked-up map Emily quickly turned away from. It smelled like fresh paint and apple tart. Emily had spent months lounging here, planning missions and supply runs, talking with Meagan late into the night.

“Outsider’s eyes, I can smell the streets on you,” Sokolov said, barely sparing her a glance. He was perched in his usual spot, a brush in his hand. He’d taken to his work fully, it seemed; his hands no longer shook.  “I trust you enjoyed yourself? Mingling with the common people?”

Her cheeks stung, but she sat down beside him. “From what I’ve heard you don’t do much of that yourself these days, Anton.”

The corner of his mouth quirked, and he set down his paintbrush. “A man of my age is best suited to isolation. And I have little taste for the common mind.”

“It’s plenty isolated in the Tower, if you want it to be.” Emily shucked off her gloves and ignored the way Sokolov looked at the Mark on her hand. “You’ve been busy, I assume. I haven’t seen any of the guards I sent you for weeks.”

He scowled. “Blistering fools. They seem to be detecting every trap in Jindosh’s house by triggering them. Still, the job is done. The remainder of the clockwork soldiers have been dismantled and the blueprints recovered. The Duke has arranged a cleanup crew for the rest of the place— I imagine by the Month of Darkness someone else will be living in it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want it yourself?”

Sokolov glared at her, and swiped up his brush. “The Serkonan heat doesn’t agree with me, Your Majesty,” he said sharply. Clearly he hadn’t quite gotten over his stint as Jindosh’s prisoner.

Emily herself saw value in reclaiming a place that had once brought you pain. She knew every corner of the Tower, and had spent long days under the gazebo where her mother had died, thinking _Can’t get me_. Once or twice she’d been back to the Cat, just to see. Since Prudence’s passing it had become a considerably nicer place.

“Did you find anything else?” she asked carefully. Her time in the mansion had been brief and she remembered little of it through the fear and the adrenaline, but the soldiers had not been Jindosh’s only technological marvel.

He hesitated for half a heartbeat. “Jindosh had a great many journals and designs I might find useful. In aiding the Empire, of course. The mechanisms in his house could be put to different and better use, and the scrap from the soldiers.”

“I want to read through these journals, and do an inventory of all devices and material you collected,” Emily said immediately. “Anything you do make that functions as a weapon must be run by me or the Lord Protector before created. Through the usual channels, or you can come speak to us yourself. I’d like it if you visited us more regularly, Anton.”

“You seek to control everything I do?” Sokolov asked, his voice strained.

“I let a genius for the ages work unfettered in Karnaca for years,” Emily said. “How many people suffered for that?”

Once Sokolov might have argued the point. He would have come around eventually— he always caved to those in power— but it would have made for a rousing discussion. Now Emily saw nothing but resignation in his eyes. “As you wish, Your Majesty. Although Karnaca will not house a genius for some time. Tonight the Dreadful Wale sets sail for Dabovka.”

“You’re going home?” Emily asked, surprised. Sokolov had never spoken of Tyvia with anything but a vague disdain, but perhaps he had felt pressured to distance himself from his northern roots.

“Tyvia was where I started as a young man. Perhaps it is there I will start again. Improve upon my work, and Jindosh’s. With your supervision, of course.” He pulled away from his canvas; Emily saw the face of a woman she didn’t recognize, gray-skinned and with blood just beginning to drip from the corner of her left eye. She had never seen a plague victim herself, safe behind the walls of the Tower and the Hound Pits, but she knew the look well enough.

“All right,” Emily said slowly. “Travel safely, Anton. Did you bring what I asked for?”

“Of course.” He gestured to the box sitting on the table. “This is all that remains of the work Piero shared with me during our time together. I trust you will use it wisely.”

Emily stood. “Then we’re finished here. I’ll give my father your regards.”

“Come now, Lady Emily. That’s not the only thing you’re here for,” Sokolov said. “She’s up above, as you well know. It might help the both of you to have proper closure, not in the shadow of a suicide mission.”  

“I don’t care about giving her closure,” snapped Emily, taken aback by his directness. She’d quickly gotten used to being danced around again, it seemed. “She helped murder my mother. I was _ten_.”

“An unforgivable crime,” Sokolov agreed. He eyed the blade at her waist, apparently not hidden well enough. “And the various guards you’ve killed in your time as a fugitive, none of them had families? Someone who might feel the same way about you?”

“Don’t play morality games with me,” Emily said, as steadily as she could manage. “I’m no assassin. I never killed anyone who didn’t shoot at me first. My mother was defenseless.”

“You rarely participated in a fair fight. You had the assistance of the….. of your friend. The Grand Guard has no such advantage.” Again, Sokolov’s eyes darted to her Mark and then away just as quickly.

“Neither do your enemies have the advantage of your intellect and experience,” she pointed out.

Sokolov smiled. “You’re a good conversationalist, Lady Emily. Certainly you didn’t learn it from your father.”

Somehow the barb was relieving. More like the Sokolov she’d grown up with, as opposed to the defeated shell of a man she’d pulled out of Jindosh’s mansion. Regardless, there was nothing he could say about Corvo she hadn’t heard before and twice over growing up.

“You can say whatever you like about me or him, Sokolov, but neither of us have ever killed anybody for _coin_.” Her lip curled at the thought.

“No, I imagine you never have. Then again, you’ve never been wanting.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “You’re telling me there’s no way Daud could have used his Mark to make money without becoming a killer for hire?”

“I am telling you I might have perspective you lack, in this.”

“You come from humble beginnings, but you’ve been sleeping on silk sheets like the rest of us,” Emily snapped. “For as long as I’ve been alive.”

“I have a vested interest,” Sokolov said pointedly, “in ensuring the empress Meagan and I reinstated remembers her mother’s values and is deserving of the throne she sits on.”

She digested that, her fingers drumming against the top of the table. “When my father met you, Sokolov, you were keeping human beings in cages. Exposing them to the rat plague so you could study them as they died.” She looked at him sideways, analyzing. “How did you pick them? You weren’t plucking aristocrats from their beds, that would cause a ruckus. Strays from the flooded district? Or was it the prisons? People who wouldn’t be missed, in any case.”

“Are you approaching a point, your majesty?” There was something like sickness in his eyes— Emily had never known Sokolov to be capable of guilt. Exhaustion and pain certainly, but…

“I might _not_ deserve the throne,” Emily said. “I might be a spoiled brat who doesn’t know right from wrong. But you were my tutor, Sokolov. You had a hand in shaping whatever I am. And more than that— you had a hand in shaping the isles, corruption and all.”

“I only meant that—”

“And I might not be as smart as you. But the Outsider never spoke to _you_ , did he? No matter how many whales you vivisected or graves you defiled.”

Sokolov looked like he’d bitten into something sour. “The Outsider values the hapless. I had my wits about me—”

“The Outsider values the downtrodden. And you haven’t been that since you discovered what you could do with a bit of whale oil.”

He sneered; his sunken eyes and pale skin made him look almost ghoulish in the dim light of the cabin. “And that’s what you are? Someone knocks you off your throne for a fraction of a moment and you know what it is to struggle?”

She looked at her hand. Her Mark was stark against the pale, unblemished skin of her hand. Perfectly manicured nails. “No. It was different with me. The Outsider had stakes in this. He wanted Delilah off that throne. So who better to get the job done?” Her lips twisted. “I thought I was done being a pawn when I became empress.”

Sokolov looked at her, and then at the box of Piero’s designs. “You’ll never be done. None of us will.”

Her lips twisted. “Maybe not.”

“Recently I think,” he said quietly, “not only of the people I experimented on during the plague, but of all those who have died to my inventions. The walls of light and the arc pylons. The whale slaughterhouses. Roseburrow killed himself when he saw what I had done with his work. And yet I live.”

Emily ached for him, at first. She remembered every person she’d killed with her own hands; she’d held them as they died, even the ones who didn’t deserve it. That was her duty, as their Empress. But the people who had suffered and died because of wrong political maneuvers, duties she’d shirked? She’d used her sword for the first time only months ago, but she’d been inadvertently killing people since she’d sat down on that throne at ten years old.

But something rang false in Sokolov, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“Do you really feel guilt?” she asked. “Or you you just know you’re supposed to?”

He blinked. She’d never seen him speechless before, either.

“My mother liked you,” she said finally. “ _I_  like you. I haven’t forgotten what you’ve done for me, and what you’ve done for the isles. You’ve served me well, and I hope you will continue to do so. But of all the valuable services you provide, discussions of morality is not one of them. I have better people for that.” She thought of Alexei, poor Alexei, and of her mother’s heart beating in her hand in sync with her own.

Sokolov’s expression shifted from confused to derisive. He stood, and made a mocking little bow. “It’s been enlightening, empress. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m sure both of us have important work to do.”

Emily looked up.  
  
  
-  
  
  
The sun had almost completely set, but Meagan hadn’t moved an inch. She was good at that, Emily had found— there was a patience to her, none of her own burning restless energy. It reminded her inadvertently of her father.

“Go easy on the old man,” Meagan said. Her expression was unfathomable. “He’s been through a lot.”

“No, I don’t think I will. He wouldn’t like that.” Emily hovered, not quite beside her, not sure where to look or what to do with her hands. “I have some questions.”

“You always do. ” Meagan— Billie, Emily supposed— looked at her steadily. “I didn’t have time to say everything I wanted to say to you, back in Dunwall. Honestly, I didn’t see the point. I know Delilah, and the odds of you coming back alive were— low.”

“And you let me go anyway,” Emily said. “Well, what’s another Kaldwin death on your conscience?”

“I could’ve lived with it.” Billie replied, her gaze still unwavering. “You were a shot in the dark, but the only shot.”

“What would you have done if I had died?” Emily asked, interested despite herself.

“I might have tried to go after Delilah myself. I’m not deluded. I couldn’t have killed her then, and I can’t kill her now. But I would have liked to talk to her one more time. Considering you’re standing here and she’s not, I won’t get that opportunity.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Emily said. “I trapped her in her own painting. In her own little fantasy world. It was more than she deserved.”

Billie smiled wryly. “Speaking of deserving, I can’t get a read on you or why you’re here. You’ve gotten everything you wanted. You’ve got no shortage of ships and captains.”

“I came for Sokolov,” Emily said feebly.

“Not so hard to sneak off the boat unseen, if you’ve got the skill. And you do.” It was Billie’s turn to glance at where her Mark was, now hidden under her glove.

Emily squirmed. “Sokolov suggested that I— I thought we should talk.”  
  
“We already talked, Emily,” Billie replied sharply. “I don’t have anything else to confess, or any more apologies to make. If you wanted to kill me, you should have done it then.”

“I didn’t have time to think before, all right? All I could see was my father frozen and Delilah destroying my city. I thought it was a poor way to thank you,” Emily said stiffly. “If it weren’t for you I’d be dead long before I had a chance to face Delilah, or rotting in Coldridge prison.”

Billie’s jaw tightened. “So you’ve changed your mind, then? Are you going to kill me yourself, or will you have your executioner do it?”

Emily looked Billie up and down, considering. “I thought about it,” she admitted. “Even after all the injustice I’ve seen, it feels…. Wrong. That there’s no punishment. I asked my father for counsel before I came here. He hasn’t told me everything— he’s concealed too much, over the years. But he did tell me about my mother’s killer. About how _Daud_ — Daud surrendered his life to Corvo, once. ”

“I’m not Daud. And _you’re_ not Corvo.” Billie lifted her chin, and despite her missing eye and arm, Emily saw her for the first time as a tangible threat.

“I know you’re not Daud,” Emily said quietly. _You only make excuses for him. You only see him as your father._ “You left him. You left that life. I know that.”

“I didn’t leave the Whalers by _choice_ , Emily,” Billie snapped. “I made a power grab at the wrong time, that’s all. I said I was sorry about your mother, and I meant it. Helping to kill her was… one of the stupidest things I ever did. But she’s no different than any of the other dozens of people I’ve killed, just because she was _royalty._ ” She took a breath. “You’re here for answers, so I’ll give them to you. All these years I’ve had to live with the fact that I found something like family in Daud, and I fucked it up. I spent a long time blaming Delilah, blaming Daud, blaming Dunwall. I can’t regret my time with Daud, or even what I did to you, because he gave me a purpose. I’m _alive_ because of those days.”

Just months ago, Emily would have been at Billie’s throat, for better or for worse. But there was tangible relief, in not being lied to or flattered. It didn’t quite erase the undeniably bitter taste in her mouth.

“I’m sure Sokolov has told you I’m taking him back to Tyvia. He thinks being back home will clear his head,” Billie said. She’d turned her head and was looking listlessly over the water again. “I’ve done my part. You won’t see me here again.”

“One more thing,” Emily said, decisively. Billie looked displeased, but she wasn’t deterred. “The audiograph I listened to in your cabin. Daud said he— he saved my life from Delilah, before. Obviously you knew her, but….” She hesitated, looking again at her hand. “Did you help him save me?”

Billie closed her remaining eye for a moment, and Emily shifted uncomfortably. “No. I didn’t.”

A gull screeched above them.

“Do I have your leave now, your majesty?” Billie asked sardonically, and Emily felt a surge of something uncomfortably like hatred, and in that moment Emily knew whatever companionship they’d built was something of the past. Billie could be friends with a fugitive, and Emily could be friends with a captain called Meagan Foster, but Empress Emily Kaldwin and assassin Billie Lurk were a different story.

She swallowed, remembering nights spent carving hunks of whalebone into amateur bone charms together, Meagan showing her how to do it with deft and steady hands.

“You don’t need my permission to do anything, Billie,” she murmured, keeping her voice as even as possible. “Or anyone’s. I hope you find who— whatever you’re looking for.”

Billie didn’t turn around.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Dunwall was a different beast by night. From the rooftops, with the help of her enhanced vision,  she could see almost everything— the bakers’ shutting down shop, the pair of Hatters slinking quietly through a side-alley. She watched them with interest for a moment before realizing they weren’t doing anything particularly nefarious.

Gangs sprang up from every crack in Dunwall’s foundation; they were inseparable from the city. Emily could root out the Hatters, but they would be replaced before long, possibly by someone more dangerous. She almost respected them for having lasted so long, where nearly all other gangs from her youth had faltered and failed. The Geezer had died years ago, and still they pressed on.

Emily itched for a cigar. Instead she transversed to a pipe.

Something caught her eye, a gleam of purple in the open window of one of the apartments that had been occupied by Delilah’s coven. She’d never seen the place from this angle before. She slid off the pipe and onto the rooftop, ducking through the window.

The shrine was lovingly put together, eerie and beautiful and out of place in the otherwise nondescript attic. She picked up the rune hesitantly, running her fingers over the carved surface. She kept the ones she’d collected in the safe room, far away from prying eyes; whenever she got too far away from them, she could feel their absence, the weakened state of her abilities.  

It took longer than usual, a minute of shuffling and true hesitation. Before the Outsider had been eager to see her; now that her life was no longer a chaotic mission, he seemed bored and restless. No doubt he was searching for some other wretch. The thought made her unexpectedly bitter.  

She turned back toward the window and the wall was missing, replaced by the blue-gray of the void. It was different than she was used to— tranquil, almost. Gentle. There were no snarling branches or harsh jagged rocks, just a floating pathway lined with gently glowing lamps and the vague hazy silhouette of Gristolian architecture in the distance.

“The owner of this place is obsessed with magic, but he’ll never know true power. That’s not a problem you’ve ever had, is it, Empress?”

She whirled. The Outsider was examining the shrine, lips curved upwards in the hint of a smirk.

“You’re welcome,” Emily said drily. “For stopping Delilah. I assume her connection to you has burned away by now.”

“Delilah is a hard person to get rid of, even trapped in a dimension of her own making.” The Outsider’s smile had disappeared at the mention of his formerly Marked. He vanished and reappeared seated further along the path, his legs dangling off the edge. He almost looked— young. Emily had never noticed that before. “Her touch will not fade from the world fully for decades. You won’t meet someone like Delilah again in your lifetime.”

“I think I’ll survive,” Emily muttered.

“You might,” he said, in that maddeningly vague way. “I’ve been watching your decisions closely, Lady Emily. Lately the blood has been running a little less in Dunwall. How long can this new path of yours last? How long do you want it to last, with your mothers’ murderers slipping from your grasp?”

“Do you watch Daud still?” she asked before she could stop herself. His name cracked in her mouth. She just wanted to _know_. She’d been in the dark for so long.

The Outsider’s eyes glittered. “All those years ago I told him his story was ending. He assumed I meant his life, but he was wrong, as he so often was. He still bears my Mark.”

“And now Billie’s after him,” Emily said quietly. She knew better than to pretend otherwise.

“You could follow her,” the Outsider told her. “No one else in the isles could quite manage it, not the most expensive investigator you could find. But you could.”

“Is that what you see? Me following her to Daud?”

“I see all paths,” he said in lieu of an answer. “I see Serkonos afire, your Royal Protector still encased stone. I see the slit throats of Howlers and Overseers alike, and Emily the Butcher sitting in your throne, eating your food, wearing your face.”

Emily shivered. Then she forced herself to flatten her expression, raise her eyebrows. “Do you see what they’re making in the Tower kitchens?”

He smiled. She thought she’d gotten used to the Outsider, but there was still something— wrong, about him, something that made her stomach turn. “I know the man in the red coat has haunted your dreams since you first became Empress. You wonder if seeing him face-to-face will bring you peace. You wonder if there is a justice high enough. Billie Lurk wonders, too. She has always wanted to speak with me, but the truth is she’s more fascinating without my help.”

 _Not just Daud,_ Emily thought. Those black eyes had been another constant in her nightmares.

The Outsider disappeared again without ceremony, and she had no time to look for him; her vision went white, and after several seconds she found herself on the attic floor, curled almost protectively around the rune.

She didn’t know why she’d expected answers from the cryptic bastard, or why she’d even wanted to see him in the first place. Grimacing and stretching her cramped hands and legs, she stood up. After a moment’s thought she dropped the rune back onto the shrine and took a step back, outside of the window and into the night.

The attic had been stuffy; she welcomed the cool breeze. She vaulted up, and then transversed to the very top of the building, Dunwall sprawling below her. Instinctively Emily went for her belt, where the heart would be, and came up empty. She clenched her hand into a fist.

 _When others might choose to draw blood, you find another way,_ what was left of her mother had whispered, as she crouched in an alleyway off the Royal Conservatory. She was trembling, and the blood from the wound in her shoulder had soaked through her sleeve. She’d thought someone was in trouble, she’d been an _idiot_ , and the Howlers had come for their pound of flesh. Now she was three sleep darts short, and still with the Grand Guard and Breanna’s witches to comb through. _This, I think, is my highest praise._

On the water, the Dreadful Wale was departing. In Emily’s time it had carried an empress, an inventor, a doctor, and a former assassin. Soon, if Billie’s hunt proved successful, it would carry the Knife of Dunwall.

Emily turned for home. Corvo was waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Emily goes to the Golden Cat for _science_.
> 
> The title is a line from a Margaret Atwood poem called 'A Sad Child' - 
> 
> My darling, when it comes  
> right down to it  
> and the light fails and the fog rolls in  
> and you're trapped in your overturned body  
> under a blanket or burning car,
> 
> and the red flame is seeping out of you  
> and igniting the tarmac beside your head  
> or else the floor, or else the pillow,  
> none of us is;  
> or else we all are.


End file.
